Back Together Again
by saltlines
Summary: He fell. There was a plan, but it went wrong. He wakes up, but things are different. Threescore men and threescore more couldn't make him like he was before. Concussed!Sherlock
1. A Great Fall

He wakes up in a room. He wakes slowly, drifting into consciousness like a leaf along the river. Eventually, after an indeterminate period of time spent weaving in and out of light and whispers and too loud noises, the leaf plunges over the edge of the fall, and he wakes completely.

His eyes are open, he is breathing, his heart is beating, and he needs to pee. He is alive.

This shouldn't surprise him, but it does. He's not sure why. He's not sure of much, now that it comes to him. He tries to make a list.

_I am alive._

_I am awake._

_I have to pee. _

_I am alive. _

The list trails off after this, even after several tries. Either there is much less to be sure of than he thought, or he just can't hold it all in his head. Both options are unfavorable. Both options are a bit not good.

He can hear voices, sounds, and see lights, but he does not respond.

Both options are unfavorable.

He drifts back off to sleep.

He wakes again, and it is brighter, louder, sharper. He can think of more things.

_I am alive._

_I am awake._

_I no longer have to pee._

_I am not alone._

_I am hungry._

_I am cold. _

_I am not alone._

He tries to focus on the others that he feels are around, but the light and the noise are too much. He tries to close his eyes, but he finds that they are already shut. A voice, familiar but far away, is calling to him. The words are jumbled, they don't make sense, but he expected that. Why did he expect that?

A dark patch looms over him, and a sweet, calm feeling floats through his veins.

I have been drugged.

Someone has drugged me.

The list stops as he once again loses his consciousness.

He wakes several more times, and his list slowly grows. He tries to count the number of times he has awoken, but he loses track every time.

_I am awake._

_My heart is beating._

_I am breathing._

_I am warm._

_I am not alone._

_My name_

_My name_

_My name_

He knows his name, but the syllables escape him. The others say it to him, and he recognizes it, but he cannot reproduce it.

_I can move my fingers._

_I can wiggle my toes._

He gets lost for a while on the word wiggle, rolling it around his mind for some time.

_I can move all my extremities. I am not paralyzed._

This surprises him, but he is not sure why.

He starts his list from the beginning, until the dark spot comes back and he is pulled back into the dark.

He begins to recognize the voices, and begins to attach names to the dark spots. Molly, Lestrade, Mycroft, Molly again, and Molly, Molly, Molly. She is the one in charge of the drug. There is someone else, but he cannot decipher him. He feels his hands on his body, causing pain but making it better. The only word he can find is brusque. Eventually he makes an association: doctor. He names the spot Dr. Brusque. He knows there should be something else, but it is locked away. His list grows and grows.

_I am awake. _

_I am alive._

_I am not paralyzed._

_I am not alone._

_Molly is here, she controls the drug._

_Mycroft is here, he brings lots of words._

_Lestrade is here, he brings the smell of blood._

_The doctor is here, he is brusque, and I know that I know him but I do not know him._

_My name is _

_My name_

He lives in the present. He loses his first waking moments, but creates new ones. He cannot reach back into the past. He doesn't think about the past. The past is boring. He wants to figure out now.

One day, there is lots of noise. Lots of light, and lots of loud. Cheering.

But later, Molly. Molly is making soft noises. He thinks that Molly is sad.

_I am awake. _

_I am alive._

_I am not paralyzed._

_I am not alone._

_Molly is here, she is crying._

He wants to comfort her, does not understand why he can't, why she doesn't notice that he reaches toward her, why she doesn't stop crying.

She doesn't give the drug, and he hurts. There is pain, sharp for the first time, throbbing and aching, all over his body. His body, his nerves, are on fire, he is being crushed by rocks and stabbed by knives. He does not fall back asleep.

There is shouting the next morning, and then he gets the drug. Mycroft, he gave the drug. Molly is gone. Molly doesn't come back.

He begins to make out more and more of his world. One day, he opens his eyes and sees Lestrade watching him. He smiles, and after a moment Lestrade smiles back. Lestrade calls out, and then he sees Mycroft. Lestrade is crying, but he is not sad. They say his name, they act delighted. He does not understand. He has not done anything different. He imagines that they did not notice him before, which is disquieting. They speak slowly to him, calling to him for ages, but he does not reply. He watches, studies, observes. He does not feel the need to participate, not yet.

They give him less and less of the drug. He spends much more time awake, much more time deciphering his surroundings. The words being to make sense, begin to form cohesive patterns in his mind. He begins to notice the passage of time, begins to notice that the others are changing their clothing, shedding layers and then putting them back on again. Molly returns, with nervous smiles and shaky hands. There is something wrong with her, but the other's don't notice. The others pretend not to notice?

One day he awakes to see Dr. Brusque fiddling with the stand by his bed. He watches the doctor for almost a minute, before a door in the back of his head unlocks. John. Doctor John Watson. He smiles, and speaks. "John."

John turns in surprise, frowning. He stares at him a minute, then looks out and calls to Mycroft.

He tries again. "John."

Mycroft appears in his field of vision, mirroring John's frown.

He is confused, he doesn't understand why John won't reply. "John?"

This time he hears it. The horrible, rasping, gargling noise. Is that him? Is that the noise his words make?

John and Mycroft talk over him, voices agitated and

agitated and

and

hopeful.

Their voices are hopeful. Hope. The only thing stronger than fear. He does not understand this connection, but then again he does not understand hope. Or fear, for that matter.

They bring him liquid, liquid cool and clear that slides down his throat like a blessing. Water. They bring him water. He tries again. "John." Success. "You are John. You are my doctor. You are Doctor John Watson."

John blinks down at him, his face a mystery. Joy, yes, and relief, but

and relief, but

relief, but

but

fear.

Joy, relief, and fear. Why would John be afraid? There is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing of which to be afraid. Isn't there? John replies. "Yes, that's right."

Mycroft beams down and him. "And I?"

"Mycroft. My brother. Obviously." He knows Mycroft, has known him. It's not new. He wants new.

Mycroft and John share a laugh, which he does not understand. Lestrade arrives, out of nowhere, and grins at him.

"Do you know who this is?" John's voice is slow, patronizing.

"Lestrade. He's a friend."

Lestrade's face contorts for a moment, revealing deep emotion. "Yeah, I suppose." He grins again. "Shame Mols isn't here," Lestrade remarks to the others.

"Molly. Molly is a friend." But there is something wrong with Molly, he adds to himself.

"Would you like to sit up?" John's inquisitive face matches John's inquisitive tone, which is comforting.

"Yes." He has been lying down for a long time. A long time?

John and Lestrade prop him up with pillows, and for the first time he can properly see the entire room. It's small, white, with a bay of windows to his right. The trees are shedding their leaves. "It is fall," he remarks quietly, mostly to himself.

He begins to associate the faces he sees now with the faces in his mind. The faces before him are slightly older, slightly worn. John and Mycroft are looking slightly

looking slightly

slightly

haggard.

They are looking slightly haggard. He rolls the word around in his mind, adding it to the pile of his favorites.

They don't leave him alone for a long time. He is forced to answer simple questions, to obey simple commands. There is only one question that stumps him.

"Do you know your name?"

"Yes."

"What is your name."

He cannot answer. It is still trapped, still locked away. He knows the words, can hear the letters, can see the syllables. But he cannot force them out.

The others are disappointed. Eventually they leave, and he is left to sleep.

It comes to him in a dream. There is shouting, and screaming, and loud noises. Loud noises? Explosions, gunshots. There is a man, slinky and lithe and gone. The man escapes his head, but not before leaving it behind.

He knows his name, now.

When they come for him in the morning, he beams at them. "I know it," he announces. "I know my name."

They gather around, sans Molly. Sans. He adds that to the pile.

They gather around, Mycroft, John, Lestrade, and he tells them. He tells them his name, triumphantly.

"I am James Moriarty."

**A/N: So this is based off of my own experiences with concussions, rather than actual research, so I can't promise medical accuracy. When you're concussed you tend to focus on putting yourself together rather than on doctor's testimony and fancy medical stuff. I know that this is probably hard to read, as it's rather scattered, but it's more an exercise in expressing the way you can be trapped in your own mind, and how you can deal with it. There is also plot, I think. **


	2. Here Comes a Candle

They are angry, but he does not know why. The syllables don't match, really, with what they called him, with what is locked up in his head, but they feel right. It's a name he's meant to know. James Moriarty. Jim.

They explain to him that no, his name is not James Moriarty. Jim is dead, Jim shot himself in the head. Jim is the reason he is hurt.

He is hurt? It makes sense, but he doesn't feel hurt. Not anymore. He feels like a puzzle, like a knot that just needs to be undone.

James Moriarty, the alluring syllables, are wrong. They are bad. They make John march out of the room, only to return hours and hours later with more drug.

Lestrade stays with him, after Mycroft has disappeared and John has stormed off. Lestrade talks to him, tells him things he already knows but could not find.

He sleeps again, and wakes and sleeps. He takes time to examine all the newly-reopened doors in his mind, to explore the nooks and crannies of every room. He makes his lists, but they fall apart rapidly. The new deluge of information is washing away his grip on reality. John has not returned, nor Molly. Mycroft visits once, to bring him some soft, comforting clothes. Lestrade stays with him, day in and day out. He is grateful. He often awakes in the night with a question, and wishes to ask before it slips away.

Molly visits with flowers, often, and she shakes a little less now. But she still seems hollow to him, still seems broken. He wishes to know more, but they are never alone, and he never has the right words.

By the time the snow begins to fall, he manages to convince that he has healed. He returns to his home. Home: 221b Baker Street, London, England. He settles in, eating on occasion and spending most of his time holed up in his room. He begins to rediscover his books, examining their once-familiar pages, finding keys to the doors in his mind.

John stays with him, at first, but he leaves in the New Year. There's a woman, Mary. John is happy.

They all check in on him, some more than others. Mycroft sends letters instead of texts, sensing that his brother prefers to hold, to touch, to feel. The written word is easier than pixels on a screen.

Molly drops by with sweets and casseroles, their quality improving over time. He is appreciative of this, and goes out of his way to make her aware of it. She is still fragile, still broken, but he hasn't yet broached the subject.

In early spring, Lestrade brings him a case. The DI has been bringing tidbits all winter, but this is the first time he's asked for help.

"No pressure, right, but we could use a bit of insight."

He is silent, running his fingers over each page in the file. He can see the facts coming to the surface, the connections growing, the answers dangling just out of reach. An hour passes, and then two, and Lestrade makes tea and eats a few of Molly's chocolate biscuits.

It is dark when he sets the thick file down. "No."

Lestrade jumps slightly, having dozed off a bit. "What?"

"No."

"Sorry, what?" Lestrade blinks uncomprehendingly.

"I don't have an answer." He is ashamed, frustrated, furious. The solution is staring him in the face, dancing a naked jig right before him. He cannot reach it. All the pieces are there, but

all the King's horses and all the King's men

couldn't put Humpty together again.

Why is Humpty Dumpty an egg? Never says so in the original. Creative license? Mass hallucination? Overenthusiastic illustrator?

Lestrade snaps him back to the moment. "Alright. I -"

a sigh, a hand rubbed over a tired face and through greying hair

"- alright. Sorry to have bothered."

He's alone again, and he relocates to John's old wardrobe. Quiet, dark, enclosed. Helps him think. He pulls at the hem of his dressing gown, repeating phrases and rhymes and keeping order.

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall

It helps, to marshall his mind.

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall

He sees the irony in the situation, and the urge to laugh overwhelms him.

All the King's horses and all the King's men

Stupid, really. Humpty shouldn't have relied on the threescore men and threescore more.

Couldn't put Humpty together again

Should've pulled himself together.

Himself. Pulled himself.

The answer hits him like a bolt out of the blue

stupid turn of phrase

and he sends off a text to Lestrade.

He throws the phone out of the wardrobe, and pulls one of the spare comforters around his collapsed and contorted limbs.

He mutters and murmurs until he falls asleep, neck bent at an odd angle, knees pulled up against his chest. The phrases and rhymes and words run through his mind, calming his scattered thoughts.

Get in the Carmichael car, Michael Carmichael. Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.

The Sandman's coming in his train of cars, with moonbeam windows and with wheels of stars.

As I was going to St. Ives, I met a man with seven wives.

_Lateral thinking problems, 2,801. _

Our father, Hallowed be thy name, thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven.

The Grand Old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men. _Quite a lot for a privet army, one should think._

Mary, Mary quite contrary, how does your garden grow? _Like any other, or maybe steeped in blood._

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end.

Oranges and Lemons, say the Bells of St. Clement's. Here comes a candle to light you to bed, here comes a chopper to chop off your head.

The lion and the unicorn were fighting for the crown.

The North wind doth blow and we shall have snow, and what will poor robin do then, poor thing? He'll sit in a barn and keep himself warm and hide his head under his wing, poor thing.

He sleeps.


	3. What Will the Poor Robin Do?

Mrs. Hudson finds him in the morning, and insists on a bath and a change of clothes. Mycroft is coming round. They are going to see mummy.

He lets Mrs. Hudson run his bath and set out his clothes. When she leaves he sinks into the steaming water, lets it run over the sides of the claw-foot tub. He soaks, letting the heat reach his bones, and drifts off again.

Mycroft finds him, and makes his little half tut, half sigh noise. The British government pulls his brother out of the bath and wraps him in a towel.

He stands mostly still as Mycroft shaves the dark stubble off his chin and neck with a straight razor. He stands less still as Mycroft runs some sort of smelly cream through his hair in an attempt to tame his curls. He dresses himself, but misses a few buttons on his shirt.

The car ride pulls at his mind, making him dizzy and nauseated. His head aches, but Mycroft won't give him anything. Must be good for mummy.

They sit in the parlor, Mummy and her rat dog on the couch, Mycroft in the armchair, him on the chaise lounge. It's too short, and his knees come up too far. It's too sunny in the parlor, too airy, too open. He's uncomfortable.

Mummy offers drinks, and he refuses. Mummy makes a deal of it, and she and Mycroft snip at each other. He watches the dust motes fall onto the coffee table. Their swirling, lazy pattern is soothing to him, and he manages to tune out his family's bickering for the time it takes the beam of light to travel from the middle of the table to the edge.

Eventually they notice his disinterest, and Mummy makes a little 'harumph' noise at the back of her throat. "Well if you two are hear, I guess I should at least get you fed." Her voice is wry and informal, having relaxed its airs a bit after Father's death.

Mycroft protests, but loses. He only ever loses to Mummy. They all move to the informal dining room, where a lone maid serves up plates and plates of rich, buttery food. Mummy seems to have known that Mycroft would be coerced into dinner, and planned the meal accordingly.

This makes him smile.

"Something amuse you, dear?" Mummy peers over the Linguini Alfredo, a twinkle in her wrinkled eyes. Mummy can see that he has discovered her game.

He doesn't answer, only meets her eyes with a bit of a wink. Mummy is pleased, and returns to the food.

It's a few months before he manages to maintain a façade of normality. He takes small cases, consults for Lestrade once a week, and goes over to Molly's for dinner every Wednesday. John visits every few days, but then Mary is pregnant and he is busy and he comes less and less. Mycroft writes, occasionally, and Mrs. Hudson cleans. He is smothered by concern and care, even though he's "all fine now, thanks".

He loses time, and his hands shake. He can't remember certain words, and sunlight bothers his eyes. He finds himself on rooftops, in closets, under tables. Once he wakes up under his bed.

The others don't notice, he limits contact and they already thought he was crazy before. He starts smoking again, to calm his shaking hands, and it doesn't work. He learns to bake, bringing a cake or a soufflé or a batch of muffins over to Molly's. Mrs. Hudson teaches him to knit, and he makes a blanket for John's new baby. One day he manages to remember all the elements of the periodic table in order without getting distracted.

Someone finds out his birthday, and convinces Lestrade to throw a surprise dinner. He is genuinely surprised, and receives many small gifts. The people surround him, smother him, and he finds himself sitting Indian-style on the fire escape. Molly is sitting next to him, and they are sharing a cigarette.

"I told them you'd hate this."

He watches Molly's impossibly small hands, tremoring slightly, pull the smoking cylinder to her lips. Have they always done that? Is that why she's a pathologist? "Thank you."

"Do you want to leave? Get a drink? Go for a walk?" Molly hands him the ciggy, and he notes that his hands are shaking more than normal.

"A walk sounds lovely.


	4. The Cuckoo Is A Pretty Bird

"Your hands shake."

Molly looks up in surprise. They've been walking in silence for almost an hour.

"Did they do that before?"

Molly looks at her hands, then back at her companion. "No. Just a nervous tic, I suppose."

His eyes narrow in concentration, and he stops walking. "Are you nervous now?"

"Nah."

"But your hands are shaking." Sherlock doesn't mean to pry or nag, but he's caught hold of a mystery that actually interests him. "If you're not nervous, and it's a stress-induced phenomenon..."

Molly closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and relaxes her shoulders. She opens her eyes, and looks critically at the tall man before her. "They don't know. They didn't notice enough to ask."

He smirks, for the first time in almost a year. "They aren't me."

Molly laughs, genuinely laughs. "Yeah, I guess."

"What don't they know?"

"Lots of things." Molly shrugs. "They don't know I hate opera, or that every Tuesday I play poker down at the docks. They don't know I have asthma, or that I have no fewer than four bottles of hairspray in my bathroom."

"But your hands. What don't they know there?" Sherlock is too fond of Molly to be frustrated, but not for lack of trying.

"There was a man. A bad man, I suppose, but that didn't really matter. I loved him and he loved me and Toby hated him. He taught me how to gamble, and how to cheat at it. He brought me wildflowers once a week . He once tried to make me a cake, for my birthday. It didn't work, but all the same." Molly pulls her coat around her, and starts walking again.

He follows. "And then?"

"And then he was killed. I saw it coming, from miles away, and I think he did too. He might have been bad, but his boss definitely was, and that got him a shot through the heart in an abandoned warehouse." Molly lights up another cigarette. "I hated him for it, for a while. But then I figured, he had it coming, and he didn't feel to terrible about dying." Molly laughs dryly. "It's funny, working with the dead so much, I like to think I know their minds, their intentions and regrets."

He watches his companion in silence for several blocks. "It scared you. You were too close to the edge."

Molly smiles. "You and me both."

Molly takes him gambling the following Tuesday. He loses lots, but Molly wins more, and she returns to him his starting cash. She makes a quip about detectives and cheaters, but he doesn't remember it later. After that, he declines to rejoin her.

They strike up a comfortable new banter, much more morbid and dry than before. He likes this new Molly, likes the bawdy jokes and the cheating, but he misses her innocence. He wonders if she does, too.

John brings his baby, named Hannah, around to the flat. He has a jolly time following her around as John naps on the sofa, and teaches her to open the refrigerator.

He gets a scolding for this, the next week, but it was rather worth the trouble.


	5. His Train of Cars

ometimes he regresses. It's September again, apparently- time has never been more non-linear to him than has been lately, but he's not really bothered, it's just a new lens through which to see the universe- and he comes to awareness at the foot of a sycamore tree. He's half-buried in leaves and the wind is roaring and the rain sleeting and he's not wearing more than a t-shirt and jeans and he has no idea where he is. His mind escapes him, the lock on his slow-healing psyche more alarming than his predicament. Rational thought leaves him, in retrospect, and he succumbs to what Molly calls a 'full-tilt, shit-brained, bollocks-it-all meltdown'.

In retrospect, he knows that he should have focused on a specific neutral thought, matched his breath to a one-two-three in one-two-three out rhythm, and simply waited his pulse back to normal.

In the moment, he can't think or breathe or count or anything. He's trapped in his shaking body, caged inside a damned hell of weakened flesh. It's agonizing minutes-days-hours before his vision clears and his tremors subside. He can stand, eventually, and collects the presence of mind to stumble to a payphone.

The passers-by give him a wide berth, but no more than they would any other crazed homeless junkie. He supposes, in retrospect, that he should count his blessings that they didn't recognize him.

Blessings. Interesting phrasing, religious connotations, implication of fate. B.T.F (before the fall, and also A.T.F., after the fall, is how Molly has taken to characterizing him, when he has questions or confusions or wants a good story) he would have dismissed the idea of an involved creator as utter nonsense. Clinging to the prayers of his childhood, though, and grasping at an entirely fractured perception, he finds himself more open to the concept. He sees more patterns, now, less facts and trails and data. He sees the process of the world, catches new insight in seemingly ordinary occasions. Intuition has led him away from an entirely analytical view, but towards unsteady ground.

He calls Molly collect, and she answers after several rings. She sounds flustered, she couldn't find her phone, has been waiting for an important call?

BTF, he would have just waved at a cc cam, and waited for Mycroft to send a car.

Molly is better at being family than Mycroft ever was. She's there with her battered Anglia presently, not too long a wait for him to forget himself, just long enough to make him certain of his impending death by hypothermia.

"Christ, Sherlock, you'll catch your death dressed like that."

He grins. "Catch my death? Implication that I'm to blame, that I played an active part in my own demise. Rather fitting."

Molly swerves dangerously back into traffic. "Yes, I'm sure it is, you utter idiot. You owe me eight pounds, by the way, for the shit-fucker congestion tariff. Eight goddamn pounds to pick your sorry arse up, and that's not even considering the price of petrol as it is."

"I'll get lunch." He's become rather immune to, or rather quite fond of, Molly's new tendency towards general verbal abuse towards the universe.

"What makes you think I'm having lunch with a twit who passed out under a tree?" Molly speeds through a busy intersection, narrowly making the light.

"I'm your best friend."

Molly nearly rear-ends the car before them. "Sorry?"

"I mean, aside from Toby, of course."

Molly blinks at him, ignoring the furious honking of the other drivers. "Of course," she says absently


End file.
